Keep the City Ticking: Architectures of Fulfilment and the Infrastructures of Migration and Labour

In the big cities of the global North, the urban space has been transformed due to new short-term forms of services such as food and parcel delivery, ride hailing, and cleaning labelled as ‘gig work’ carried out by migrants. To better understand how these migrants play an active role in remaking the urban space, the network will develop a novel theoretical framework that synthesizes the key concepts of ‘transnational migration infrastructures’, ‘labour as infrastructure’ and ‘architectures of fulfilment’ informed by anthropological, migration, labour, urban planning, and media studies. The network members have ethnographically or historically studied how migrants carrying out gig work, not only have to negotiate immigration authorities and labour markets, but also the city. Through four meetings the network contributes to the establishment of a theoretical framework to analyse the link between migration, a new organization of work and the transformation of the 21st century cities.